This is one of my favourite mindfulness practices. From kindergarten to the boardroom, all ages can connect with this simple, calming movement.

This practice is recognized by mental health practitioners as an anxiety reducer. Starfish can help the challenges that we face at any age - whether you’re over-excited about a birthday party, bored in the boardroom, or worried in the middle of the night. It helps us unhook from strong emotions and addictive thinking, and come back to our body in this moment. We offer calm and peace to ourselves, and gain space around a difficult thought or feeling.

The Exercise

Choose a hand to be your starfish, and a finger to be your breath pointer.

Start below your thumb, down at your wrist, and wait for your next in-breath.

As you breathe in naturally, trace your in breath carefully up your thumb with your finger. You need to time it so that you’re at the very tip of your thumb when your in-breath becomes an out-breath.

Breathe down your thumb for your out-breath, so that you’re at the very base when your out-breath becomes an in-breath.

Remember – no messing with your breath! Simply speed up or slow down your tracing finger.

Breathe up and down each finger, with care and deliberate focus. Let yourself rest in the sensation of movement – your lungs breathing and your finger moving. As you breathe down your little finger, rest at the base of your wrist for a moment. Check in and see how you’re feeling. Simply notice the feelings – there’s no need to judge or explain anything. You’re just looking.

Then swap hands.

Settling at your wrist, wait for an in-breath and repeat the process, leisurely tracing your breath up and down your fingers, in and out. Pause again at your wrist. How are you feeling? Again, simply notice and label. There’s nothing to fix.

Once you have learned Starfish, your body can respond very quickly to the practice, immediately settling in to the sensation of breath and touch. We learn that this is an appropriate moment to rest in our body and focus on ourselves.

Tips for Group Leaders

(1) Adding wonder

You can take time to talk about starfish as a group. Who’s seen a starfish? What colours might they be? How many legs do they have? Does anyone know any interesting facts about starfish? You can listen to each other’s experiences and ideas, and also draw your own starfish. This catalyzes our imagination, and helps us to view nature (and ourselves) with compassion as we learn this exercise.

(2) What's in a name?

This practice has lots of different names, including 'finger breathing'. When I'm working with teenagers, 'starfish' may sound a little childlike, and I usually call it 'tracking your breath'. You can also do this as 'Mountain', where your outstretched fingers form a mountain range that your finger will climb up and down. It’s nice to imagine our fingers as the petals of a flower, which we trace in all its loveliness.

Sharings on Starfish

This is a simple, creative, mindfulness practice that we can enjoy to celebrate Mother’s Day. You can do this with family, friends, a class or any group. You can also do it as an exploration on your own, to tap into a sense of care and nourishment.

· Helps us to appreciate· Strengthens connection· Grows gratitude

It’s super-simple. We explore together:

What do we think about when we hear the word ‘mother’? What kinds of thoughts or feelings come up?

Our mother

It might be our own mother (or mothers), maybe a sense of care, making sure you brush your teeth, big hugs, being annoyed when you don’t listen – welcome every sharing.

Note: If someone is feeling very negative about their mother, you can guide them to focus on themselves – they get to be here, safe and healthy. That wouldn’t have been possible with out their mother. So that’s something good.

Our lineage

We might remember (or imagine) our grandmothers, and great-grandmothers - and further back still. This line of women who nourished our family for hundreds, thousands of years. We know they travelled from other lands – they sailed in dangerous waters, and reached new lands, and were brave and wise and had great days and awful days, and because they lived, we get to live. Amazing!

Animal and Other Mothers

We can explore wider: what about an otter mother, or a squirrel mom, or an eagle ma, or a great blue whale mammy – what do they have in common? Allow ourselves to imagine all these mothers across the world, caring and protecting and feeding and teaching.

And wider still!

Our Mother Earth

If we think of a mother as someone who helps us to grow and cares for us, then the Earth is our biggest mother of all. We can explore the homes she provides (house, tent, nest, burrows, an ocean to swim around in), all the tasty food that she grows for us, the beautiful places that she has offered us to enjoy. She is the mother of all of us. And she is kind, patient, wildly creative, and accepts us just as we are. So we can try to take good care of her and live in a way that protects her.

The crafty part!

(1) Cut out heart shapes (you can do this in advance for ease).

You can use any coloured paper, or choose colours as themes, for example:

· pink paper = is alive with us· peach paper = is not alive with us (but is alive in us!)· green paper = Earth mother

(2) Then we decorate our hearts. We can draw pictures or use words to represent someone and something that we love about them.

It might be something we love in our mother. It might be saying thank you to a great x 10 grandmother, whose name we don’t even know – thanks for being you so that I can be me. And we might notice that there are other people in our lives who are like mothers - who take care of us and help us grow. So we don’t need to be strict about this. And we can all colour a heart or twenty for the Earth, for the great food and musicians and stories and people and pets that she has brought into our lives. Thanks!

(3) We make a display of all our beautiful hearts, and enjoy the offerings of love and gratitude.

We can put a hand on our heart to connect deeply with it.

We are cared for in so many ways. May we always know how much we are cared for.

(4) Spreading the love

We can wish our sense of care to travel around the world, finding anyone who is feeling lost or alone. May they be reassured, may they know they are cared for, and feel warm and safe and loved.